Tag Archives: Immature

My friend Tracy sent me this interesting post. As I read it, I thought I was going to disagree with him about who is to blame for the mess he describes, but as we’ll see in a bit, I don’t.

Here’s his intro, which pretty much everyone agrees on:

The Five Traditional Milestones of Adulthood

Something magically happens between adolescence and young adulthood. There are five traditional milestones of that mark entrance into adulthood that sociologists, psychologists, and the general population have used as a proxy to determine when someone has reached that tipping point of maturity. It is at this time adolescence is shed and emotional maturity comes to full fruition.

These are:

Leaving Home

Becoming Financially Independent

Completing School

Marrying

Starting a Family

He has some examples to illustrate who is and isn’t mature:

Examples of Adults:

A 25-year old teacher with a college degree, who works full time, is married, has a child, owns her own home, and pays for her own living expenses

A 65-year old janitor with a high school diploma, who works full time, is married or widowed, has children, owns his own home, and pays for his own living expenses

Examples of Extended Adolescence:

A 30-year old who has part of their rent and bills covered by parents, endlessly enrolls in colleges or universities seeking additional degrees or credentials, single, without children.

A 45-year old high-school dropout living on social welfare programs who spends his days getting drunk in bars

OK, then he talks about who suffers the most from “extended adolescence”:

What is particularly interesting is the interaction between biology and the paradigm shift that has occurred with so much of the younger generation suffering from extended adolescence. Women have a specific, limited window of time in which they can genetically reproduce and to which they are attractive to potential mates. This so-called “biological clock”, written into the code at the very deepest core of our DNA, puts a limit on childbearing for females.

Fertility: Female fertility peaks at 20 to 30 years old. After 30 years old, fertility drops by 20%. After 35, it drops 50%. After 40, it drops 95%. As for in vitro fertilization, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine states that women in their early 40’s have, on average, only a 3% to 5% chance of having a baby through this method.

Down Syndrome: At 25, a woman has about 1 chance in 1,250 of having a baby with Down Syndrome; at age 30, a 1-in-1,000 chance; at age 35, a 1-in-400 chance; at age 40, a 1-in-100 chance; and at 45, a 1-in-30- chance.

Miscarriage: Only 9 percent of recognized pregnancies for women aged 20 to 24 end in miscarriage; 15 percent of women aged 25-30 miscarry; 40 percent of women over 40 do and more than 50 percent miscarry at 42 years of age.

These limitations do not apply to men (an 80 year old man can still reproduce). Men have virtually no opportunity cost to waiting to find a mate. If they want to spend their twenties working their way up their field, putting money in the bank, playing video games, and hanging out with friends, they can always wake up one morning and decide they are ready to settle down, get married, and have kids. As such, the biological cost of extended adolescence is significantly and substantially higher for women than it is for men. Females suffer from a Mother Nature-induced “use it or lose it” policy.

So, should men be expected to ride to the rescue of women who are the end of the their fertility period? Should men make things “work out” for women who refused to marry when they were in their 20s, when they were fertile and attractive?

Nope:

This fear was encapsulated by Kay Hymowitz in a book called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys.

[…]As one reviewer somewhat critically noted of the book, “Hymowitz wants the child-men [those suffering from extended adolescence] to man up so that women don’t have to become spinsters or “choice mothers” at the expense of their careers. Might women alter their own behavior? “[T]he economic and cultural changes are too embedded, and, for women especially, too beneficial to reverse.” So the answer is no. Although it is women who are becoming disenchanted with the way things are, and although it is women who have created this situation, it is [in her opinion] men who ought to change. And they are to change precisely when women are ready.”

The reviewer is correct because men are acting rationally within the confines the new paradigm. In today’s world, men are presented no social, financial, emotional, or reproductive advantage by adjusting their own life to the ticking of a potential mate’s biological clock. It is for the woman, to borrow a phrase, “too damn bad”. It may not be fair, but in a finite world, there is an opportunity cost to every decision we make. That has always been one of the central themes of this blog. Incentive systems drive nearly everything in civilization from the type of people we attract into certain industries to the kind of behavior we reward. The incentive system for men has changed and society now reflects this reality.

I actually blame the pastors and parents for allowing women to delay marriage, and then blaming men for not marrying women who pass their fertility date. Pastors and parents don’t challenge young women’s feelings with the truth about what she ought to be doing in order to grow up early and attract a man during the time when she is younger and fertile. They want to let women decide what to do at every point in their lives, based on their feelings “in the moment”. The refusal to make judgments leads to women having delusions like “I can have children when I’m 35” and “I can change a bad man into a good man after I marry him” and “a degree in English is as worthwhile as a degree in computer science”.

Feminism has a lot to do with it. Women used to be taught by pastors and parents that they should choose chaste men with good jobs, work histories and savings. But feminism says that men don’t have any special provider role, and now the main things that women look for in a man is that he is attractive, fun, and lets her do whatever she feels like doing – no matter how crazy and irrational it is.

One woman recently told me that a female friend of ours, who is dating a penniless 28-year-old student, who has never worked a day in his life need not worry about him. She said “if they marry, he’ll drop out of school and start to work and provide for her”. She is 33, and she thinks that marrying a full-time student is a good idea, because he enthusiastically supports her crazy plans to pursue fun, thrills and travel into her mid-30s. She tells him that God is telling her (through her feelings) to pursue fun and thrills through travel – a position she held when she still an atheist in college, mind you. And she intends to keep up the traveling for as long as she can, even if she isn’t out of debt until she turns 40. And he, in response, is both unwilling to, and incapable of, questioning her plan from a practical point of view. She likes that he lets her fly the plane, even it it means she’ll crash it and kill them both. There is something mentally wrong with a man who stays in school until he is 30, and thinks that he is fine to be in a relationship with a woman. Only men who show aptitude for the provider role should be taken seriously by women.

Pastors and parents don’t dare hurt the self-esteem of sensitive little girls by telling them to study hard things, get full-time jobs, move out of the house and focus on marrying a man who can provide during their 20s. And what happens when the “fun-thrills-travel until you’re 35” plan explodes and no one wants to marry her? Well, then, all pastors and parents who applauded when she delayed marriage blame men for not wanting to marry her. But men don’t marry 35-year-old women. At age 35, the value proposition of marriage to men has been greatly diminished by age and infertility. (Or worse: by promiscuity, cohabitation, divorce, and children from other men) There is a window of opportunity for a woman to invest in a man with her youth, beauty, support and encouragement. Once that window is closed, a man who has a good education, a good resume and good amount of savings has no obligation to marry. All the battles have already been fought as well as they are going to be, and without a woman there to help him. He doesn’t have any emotional connection to a woman that would cause him to either get married or stay married, because of the help he received when it really mattered. Believe me when I tell you that single women today are very intentional about passing up good men so that they can be “free” to travel and have fun. They know exactly what they are doing, but hope to somehow escape the responsibility for their choices later.

Like this:

My friend Tracy sent me this interesting post. As I read it, I thought I was going to disagree with him about who is to blame for the mess he describes, but as we’ll see in a bit, I don’t.

Here’s his intro, which pretty much everyone agrees on:

The Five Traditional Milestones of Adulthood

Something magically happens between adolescence and young adulthood. There are five traditional milestones of that mark entrance into adulthood that sociologists, psychologists, and the general population have used as a proxy to determine when someone has reached that tipping point of maturity. It is at this time adolescence is shed and emotional maturity comes to full fruition.

These are:

Leaving Home

Becoming Financially Independent

Completing School

Marrying

Starting a Family

I hate not being married and not having any children, but I can’t marry a feminist and that’s all the church seems to be producing these days. The other ones I had finished by age 23 (debt-free).

He has some examples to illustrate who is and isn’t mature:

Examples of Adults:

A 25-year old teacher with a college degree, who works full time, is married, has a child, owns her own home, and pays for her own living expenses

A 65-year old janitor with a high school diploma, who works full time, is married or widowed, has children, owns his own home, and pays for his own living expenses

Examples of Extended Adolescence:

A 30-year old who has part of their rent and bills covered by parents, endlessly enrolls in colleges or universities seeking additional degrees or credentials, single, without children.

A 45-year old high-school dropout living on social welfare programs who spends his days getting drunk in bars

OK, then he talks about who suffers the most from this, and it’s women:

What is particularly interesting is the interaction between biology and the paradigm shift that has occurred with so much of the younger generation suffering from extended adolescence. Women have a specific, limited window of time in which they can genetically reproduce and to which they are attractive to potential mates. This so-called “biological clock”, written into the code at the very deepest core of our DNA, puts a limit on childbearing for females.

Fertility: Female fertility peaks at 20 to 30 years old. After 30 years old, fertility drops by 20%. After 35, it drops 50%. After 40, it drops 95%. As for in vitro fertilization, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine states that women in their early 40’s have, on average, only a 3% to 5% chance of having a baby through this method.

Down Syndrome: At 25, a woman has about 1 chance in 1,250 of having a baby with Down Syndrome; at age 30, a 1-in-1,000 chance; at age 35, a 1-in-400 chance; at age 40, a 1-in-100 chance; and at 45, a 1-in-30- chance.

Miscarriage: Only 9 percent of recognized pregnancies for women aged 20 to 24 end in miscarriage; 15 percent of women aged 25-30 miscarry; 40 percent of women over 40 do and more than 50 percent miscarry at 42 years of age.

These limitations do not apply to men (an 80 year old man can still reproduce). Men have virtually no opportunity cost to waiting to find a mate. If they want to spend their twenties working their way up their field, putting money in the bank, playing video games, and hanging out with friends, they can always wake up one morning and decide they are ready to settle down, get married, and have kids. As such, the biological cost of extended adolescence is significantly and substantially higher for women than it is for men. Females suffer from a Mother Nature-induced “use it or lose it” policy.

I don’t think that a Down syndrome child is insurmountable, but it’s more challenging.

So, should men be expected to ride to the rescue at the last minute, to make things “work out” for women who refused to marry when they were in their 20s, when they were fertile and attractive?

Nope:

This fear was encapsulated by Kay Hymowitz in a book called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys.

[…]As one reviewer somewhat critically noted of the book, “Hymowitz wants the child-men [those suffering from extended adolescence] to man up so that women don’t have to become spinsters or “choice mothers” at the expense of their careers. Might women alter their own behavior? “[T]he economic and cultural changes are too embedded, and, for women especially, too beneficial to reverse.” So the answer is no. Although it is women who are becoming disenchanted with the way things are, and although it is women who have created this situation, it is [in her opinion] men who ought to change. And they are to change precisely when women are ready.”

The reviewer is correct because men are acting rationally within the confines the new paradigm. In today’s world, men are presented no social, financial, emotional, or reproductive advantage by adjusting their own life to the ticking of a potential mate’s biological clock. It is for the woman, to borrow a phrase, “too damn bad”. It may not be fair, but in a finite world, there is an opportunity cost to every decision we make. That has always been one of the central themes of this blog. Incentive systems drive nearly everything in civilization from the type of people we attract into certain industries to the kind of behavior we reward. The incentive system for men has changed and society now reflects this reality.

I actually blame the pastors and parents for this. Pastors and parents don’t challenge women’s feelings with the truth about what she ought to be doing in order to grow up and be well-positioned in the future. They want to let women decide what to do at every point in their lives, based on their feelings in the moment. The refusal to make judgments leads to women having delusions like “I can have children when I’m 35” and “I can change a bad man into a good man after I marry him” and “a degree in English is as worthwhile as a degree in computer science”.

Feminism has a lot to do with it. Women used to be taught by pastors and parents that they should choose chaste men with good jobs, work histories and savings. But feminism says that men don’t have any special provider role, and now the main things that women look for in a man is that he is attractive, fun, and lets her do whatever she feels like doing – no matter how crazy and irrational it is.

One woman recently told me that a friend of ours who is dating a penniless 28-year-old student who has never worked a day in his life need not worry, because “if they marry, he’ll drop out of school and start to work and provide for her”. She is 33, and she thinks that marrying a full-time student is a good idea, because he enthusiastically supports her crazy plans to pursue fun, thrills and travel into her mid-30s. She tells him that God is telling her (through her feelings) to pursue fun and thrills through travel – a position she held when she still an atheist in college, mind you. And he, in response, is both unwilling to, and incapable of, questioning her plan from a practical point of view. She likes that he lets her fly the plane, even it it means she’ll crash it and kill them both.

Pastors and parents don’t dare hurt the self-esteem of sensitive little girls by telling them to study hard things, get full-time jobs, move out of the house and focus on marrying a man who can provide during their 20s. And what happens when the “fun-thrills-travel until you’re 35” plan explodes and no one wants to marry her except losers? Well, then, all pastors and parents blame men for not wanting to marry her. But men don’t marry 35-year-old women when the value proposition of marriage has been greatly diminished by age and infertility. (Or worse: by promiscuity, cohabitation, divorce, and children from other men)

Women who think that they can play the fool through their 20s and early 30s, calling their feelings the voice of God, and being affirmed by parents and pastors in their crazy views, are in for a surprise. Men have needs and feelings too. Men respond to incentives. Marriage-minded women need to actively repudiate feminism, or they must live with the consequences of their failure to engage.

Lesbian couples are nearly twice as likely as gay men to end a civil partnership, according to the latest government figures.

The number of same-sex couples ending their civil unions leapt by 20 per cent last year, seven years after their introduction in 2005. Overall there were 794 dissolutions in 2012, almost 60 per cent of which were female couples, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

In the seven years since gay couples were able to have civil partnerships, 3.2 per cent of male unions ended in dissolution, compared to 6.1 per cent of female couples.

Sociologists believe the lower rates of ‘divorces’ among gay men may reflect a trend of women committing sooner and having higher expectations for a relationship. Women in civil partnerships tie the knot at an average age of 37.6, compared to men, for whom the average age is 40. Erzsebet Bukodim, sociologist at the University of Oxford, said: “In heterosexual marriage the divorce rate is higher if you enter marriage at a very young age. That might be one of the reasons we’re seeing this [high dissolution rate for women] in civil partnerships.”

Gunnar Andersson, professor of demography at Stockholm University, has found in successive studies that women in Norway, Sweden and Denmark are twice as likely to dissolve their civil partnerships than men. He said: “This reflects trends in a heterosexual marriage because women are more prone to say they want to marry – but they’re also more likely to initiate a divorce. Women usually have higher demands on relationship quality, that’s often been said in studies. Even if you control for age there is still a trend of more women ending partnerships than men.”

Previous figures show British women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to file for divorce than men. Women initiated the divorce in two thirds of cases in the UK in 2011.

I used to frequent the once-defunct-now-rebooted “Family Scholars” blog ten years ago. In that forum, whenever I mentioned the now well-accepted fact of a 2:1 ratio of female/male initiation in divorce, I was repeatedly, reliably, and indignantly informed by the liberalists and anti-traditionalists in the crowd that the problem wasn’t with women’s trigger-happy dissolutive behaviors, but with straight men, whose insufferable and abusive natures all but forced their women to divorce them and take their kids, half their stuff, and 1/3 of their paycheck for 20 years. Men sucked so bad at being husbands, it was contended, that women had little choice but to kick them to the curb. They deserved all the divorce-rape they got, the bastards.

So imagine my surprise to see the same ratio between female and male divorce initiation that we’ve observed in straights for decades now, mirrored in the homosexual community. This has gotta be bad news for the fish-bicycle set that loves to blame masculine misbehavior for, well, everything, including female-initiated divorce. Instead, we now see that when woman is paired with woman, the dissolution rate is twice that of male-male couplings, just like it is with straight couples.

Just to support his assertions, here is a quotation from p. 340 of “Handbook of Interpersonal Commitment and Relationship Stability”, edited by Jeffrey M. Adams and Warren H. Jones, published by the academic press Springer in 1999:

The differential breakup rates of married versus same-sex couples point to the role of marital institutions, but male and female couples exhibit differences in stability as well, suggesting that the influence of gender needs to be explained. With a small cross-sectional sample of 25 gay men and lesbians each, Duffy and Rusbult (1986) found that lesbians had longer relationships. But in the only two studies ever conducted with large samples of same-sex relationships (over 1,000 couples in each), consistent differences have been found between gay men and lesbians in breakup rates, both in the late 1970s and the late 1980s: Lesbian relationships, whether measured longitudinally (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983) or retrospectively (Bryant & Demian, 1994), were of shorter duration than gay male relationships. The gay men in couples surveyed by Bryant and Demian (1994) reported a mean duration of their current relationships of 6.9 years, compared to 4.9 years for lesbians (p. 104). Furthermore, though both gay men and lesbians reported spending roughly the same total amount of time in their lives in major same-sex relationships, the women reported more past relationships, suggesting that those relationships as well had been of shorter duration. Finally, there was a small but potentially meaningful difference in the proportion of lesbians (92%) as opposed to the pro-portion of gay men (96%) reporting commitment to their current partner for a lifetime or “a long time.” These findings run counter to general expectations (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983; Eskridge, 1996) based on beliefs about women’s greater desires and capabilities compared to men in creating and maintaining intimacy and connection in intimate relationships.

A study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence examined conflict and violence in lesbian relationships. The researchers found that 90 percent of the lesbians surveyed had been recipients of one or more acts of verbal aggression from their intimate partners during the year prior to this study, with 31 percent reporting one or more incidents of physical abuse.[46]

In a survey of 1,099 lesbians, the Journal of Social Service Research found that slightly more than half of the lesbians reported that they had been abused by a female lover/partner. The researchers found that “the most frequently indicated forms of abuse were verbal/emotional/psychological abuse and combined physical-psychological abuse.”[47]

A study of lesbian couples reported in the Handbook of Family Development and Intervention“indicates that 54 percent had experienced 10 or more abusive incidents, 74 percent had experienced six or more incidents, 60 percent reported a pattern to the abuse, and 71 percent said it grew worse over time.”[48]

This is not even to mention the concept of “lesbian bed death“, which is the frequently occurring cessation of sexual activity in lesbian relationships. A recent study on that is here.

Liberal women and fear of commitment

So what causes liberal women do break commitments more than men, whether they are straight or gay? I think there is a reason and it is gender-specific, but it can be mitigated by male leadership and influence in the relationship. And here it is: liberal women think of relationships as being more about emotions and peer-approval than about planning, hard work and results. Liberal women have a notion about marriage being something that will allow them to live happily ever after – and be approved of (or envied) by their peers. Liberal women believe that it is their partner’s job to give them that, and if they don’t get it, then the relationship isn’t working, and can get jettisoned.

Studies have shown that liberal women have difficulty evaluating men to see if a man is suitable to perform traditional male duties in marriage. Typically, liberal women try to judge men based on how the man makes them feel. Having been raised to be feminists, they just don’t believe that men have any distinct “male” capabilities that they need to evaluate. Liberal women tend to believe that they can tell a man’s suitability for marriage by looking at his appearance, or by asking their liberal female friends what they think of the man. These standards are heavily influenced by the culture, as well – movies, TV, music, and so on.

Liberal women also don’t generally view marriage as a long-term enterprise that has definite goals that may differ from their own personal goals. Liberal women tend to rebel against strict moral boundaries and exclusive religious truth claims, because they restrain them from making relationships (with men or children) all about themselves. They have to be convinced to see the value of moral boundaries and religious truth claims, and they usually haven’t done the work themselves to have that capability. A strong male leader who is focused on moral and religious issues can mitigate the liberal female tendency towards narcissism, but liberal women tend to avoid such men as being “too strict” or “too controlling” – even if the leadership is to make the woman grow and get better.

Any structure or plan to the relationship is viewed with suspicion because it distracts from the goals of liberal women: feeling good and having social acceptance. That’s why young, unmarried liberal women marry people like Bill Clinton, John Edwards and Tiger Woods who know nothing about morality and religion. It’s not rational, but the lack of moral standards and religious truth claims makes them feel safe and autonomous. And that is more important than being led and having the safety of a man who takes morality and religion seriously. One lesbian I know recently told me that discussing morality and religion objectively should not be done because people with strong views on morality and religion are “too mean”.

It’s up to sensible, moral, religious men to come along and civilize these young, unmarried feminist-influenced liberal women. We need to cause them to think about what marriage really is, what marriage really requires from each partner, and what children really require from marriage. We need to push the engineering approach to marriage during the courtship phase, and wean them off of the crazy emotional vain selfish view of marriage. If men don’t lead liberal women during the courtship to think deeply and rationally about marriage, then liberal women will not be prepared or capable of commitment over the long-term. If a man doesn’t take the time during the courtship to lead and grow a woman before the wedding, he is taking chances with his future and the future of his children. Not to mention his service to God, which will be negatively impacted by a divorce. At the very least, there will be a financial loss that cuts off charitable giving. At the worst, the potential impact that a good marriage and good Christian children have for the Kingdom will be lost.

Captain Capitalism explains all the reasons why men are not getting married any more, and what women can do to reverse the so-called “marriage strike”. In his view, it is women who voted for bigger government and higher taxes who are responsible for the decline of marriage among men.

His massive bullet-point list explains some of the things that women support that cause men to avoid marriage:

Did you hear of this “divorce fad” going around? Apparently men get to pay out the majority of the time be it alimony or child support.

Did you hear about this “divorce fad” going around? Apparently 65% of the time it’s women who initiate divorce.

Kids cost around $500,000 each to raise. given employment prospects we can’t afford that. Much rather buy a boat or frankly work all that much less.

Hey, you hear about this federal budget deficit and debt? Apparently we elected this guy “Barack Obama” and a bunch of democrats into office who are now mortgaging the future. This means our expenses in the future will be higher. Well, of course us “foolish, immature, pooping, farting boys” were too “immature” to vote for him like you wise women, but then again we’re too busy flinging poo at each other to ponder the future macro-economic ramifications of a collapsing dollar.

Hey, you hear about this social security medicare thing? Apparently enough “smart wise women” disproportionately kept voting for democrats to essentially have those immature 20 something men pay for the livelihood for these aging people. This added expense on our futures make’s it that much harder economically to commit to a wife and children.

Hey, you hear about this “welfare state” “medicaid” thing? Apparently enough “smart wise women” disproportionately over the years voted in enough democrats to essentially replace the role of fathers with government programs making fathers not only unnecessary, but an increasingly risky and unrewarding proposition, not to mention, making it easier for women to just up and leave their husbands, because well, “they needed to find themselves” and the government will take care of the kids while they go pursue their EPL fantasy.

Hey, did you hear about this “welfare state” thing? Apparently because we’ve now outsourced bringing up children to the government and have to create government jobs for all the “sociology majors” and “education majors”and “communications majors” our tax bill will go through the roof. Oh! Wait!!! No it doesn’t! I forgot! I’m a guy! I can live on very little, work a crappy job, work part time, live in a crappy apartment with my buds and STILL have enough disposable income to play video games and buy booze.

What to make of all these facts? Well, men don’t like paying more in taxes and getting less liberty. It makes it harder for us to justify marriage rationally. We want to get married, but when we run the numbers, we see red, not black. Men can either afford marriage and family or government social programs, but we cannot afford both. We can either be husbands and fathers, or we can pay for welfare checks and social programs that replace men, for women who don’t want to have to deal with relating to a man.

I think the problem of men not wanting to marry is caused by women actually believing feminism – that men and women are identical. Once you believe that, there is no special role that men are supposed to play, and no way to distinguish a man who fills that role from one who doesn’t. According to feminism, which most young women believe, men aren’t meant to be providers, protectors or moral/spiritual leaders. Chastity is out. A boring, good-paying job is out. Morality is out. Sobriety is out. Apologetics and theology are out.

What’s in? Being good-looking, inoffensive, and entertaining. Women are not selecting responsible men because they think that the men can be changed to be responsible, through sex, or maybe through nagging, and eventually through the threat of losing all his money and custody of his children. Men aren’t stupid. They’ve noticed that responsibility and morality are out, and they’re acting like clowns because that’s what women prefer when getting drunk and hooking up. Remember that Duke University student and her report on all the men she slept with? – they were graded by physical attractiveness, sexual technique, popularity and athletic ability.

Many women today accept feminism, with its strong emphasis on selfishness and career advancement. Those women end up wasting their 20s on their careers and only pursue men who are attractive and entertaining. They aren’t looking to settle down with a protector/provider/moral leader/spiritual leader. They don’t want anyone to judge them or lead them. (Just try offering a woman a book on apologetics, and you’ll see what I mean). By the time they hit 35 and decide to get married, all the men are cautious. Men want to get married to women in their early 20s. What is the point of marrying a 35-year old woman who has lost her looks and her fertility? What is the value proposition for a man at that time? Plus, two decades of binge drinking, partying and hook-ups are not good preparations for creating a helpful, loving wife. Men are not stupid. We know the difference between a bitter, cynical harpy and chaste, loving princess.

Men do what women expect them to do in order to get sex. Just read the peer-reviewed studies on hooking up. If women don’t select men who can do specific things as husbands and fathers, then men won’t prepare themselves to do specific things. If they are already getting sex for playing the fool, then why should they do more than play the fool? If women obsessed over Paul Ryan and William Lane Craig, then that’s what men would aspire to. They don’t, and so men don’t. Mature men intimidate women with their strong opinions, moral judgments, and exclusive theological claims. Much better to have an immature man who is shallow and politically correct.

There is a way for women to get what they want from men, but they actually have to engage in conversations with men and find out what men want from women. And what men want from a marriage. What they want from children. What they want from government. What they want from schools. What they want from the workplace. What they want from the church. You can’t take away everything men need to marry and then expect them to marry. Nagging, belittling, withholding sex and controlling are not incentives for men to marry. Every time you break a man down, that is one less husband and father candidate. And eventually, the money flow dries up for the sperm-banks and social programs that substitute for men. What will women do then?

For myself, I am NOT on the same track as secular men (video games, alcohol, girlfriends and TV). I’m earning and saving to support Christian scholars and apologetics events in churches and universities. That’s my role right now until women destroy feminism with their own hands. Marriage is only good for me if it is good for God. And I need to be convinced that it will be good for God by whoever is applying for the job. I would like to see the reasons why I should marry in a woman’s moral decisions, her studying of difficult apologetic topics, and her political and economic conservatism. I would like to see that she understands men and marriage and understands how marriage and parenting can serve God, if done in an unselfish, moral and disciplined way. No pursuing happiness as the most important thing. No dismissing her moral obligations as “legalism”.

Making one woman feel happy with a diamond ring and an expensive wedding is not a good choice for me when I could spend a lot less money sponsoring a stack of debates over my lifetime on Christian topics, in front of hundreds of thousands of university students, or even in churches. There are ways that marriage could be a good deal for God, but I want to see the value proposition for marriage before I sign up. So far, most women seem to resent the idea that marriage should be have to be proven good for God. They resent being asked questions that test their authenticity and capabilities as Christians. But everything we do is for God, don’t I have a right to ask what is in it for him? I think a lot of Christian men are asking that question. What’s in it for God? In fact, Paul recommends the single life in 1 Cor 7 precisely because of the dampening effect that ineffective Christian women have on men. Most Christian women refuse to “woman up” and learn how to be a good wife and mother – so why should a man choose that?

Two-thirds of single women voted for President Barack Obama on Tuesday – showing that unattached women are a powerful Democratic voting bloc.

These women were galvanized not only by traditional “women’s” issues such as birth control and abortion rights, but also by Obama’s jobs message and health reform, analysts say.

NBC News national exit polling shows that 67 percent of unmarried women said they voted for Obama. That’s in line with the 2008 election, when 70 percent of single women helped usher the president into office. This proves it wasn’t a single-election phenomenon: unmarried women have solidified into a powerful voting force, experts say.

“One of the reasons for that is the birth control issue,” says American Association of University Women Policy Director Lisa Maatz. “Abortion — reasonable people can disagree on that and do. But the whole issue of access to birth control…is something that most women thought was a settled issue.”

By the way — this isn’t just young women, Maatz pointed out. Many of the single women voters were over 50 — divorced, widowed or never married.

In the rest of this post, when I say “women”, I mean “67% of single / unmarried / divorced women who voted for abortion and gay marriage”. Please keep that in mind.

So what is it that these single / unmarried / divorced women really want these days?

Here’s what they want:

they want taxpayer-funded contraceptives, paid for by Christians and provided by Christians

they want taxpayer-funded abortions, paid for by Christians and provided by Christians (no conscience protections)

they want children to be raised by single mothers, supported with taxpayer money

they want children to be raised by same-sex couples, and harsh laws preventing anyone from disagreeing with gay marriage

they want no-fault divorce laws, so that they can easily get out of any marriages that don’t make them happy

they want taxpayer-funded day care, so that they can get back to their careers as quickly as possible

In the UK, you can also get taxpayer-funded breast enlargements. And in some parts of Canada, you can get taxpayer-funded in-vitro fertilization. Both countries have single-payer health care, which is very popular with single women because women typically need more health care and men need less – but you pay into these systems based on income, so it is a redistributive system that punishes work and rewards those people who require more health care – sometimes as a result of their own poor choices.

So women basically want to be unchaste, to depend on government handouts, to dismiss the traditional roles of men in marriage (protector, provider, moral/spiritual leader) and to dismiss the needs of children for their mother and father (either through day care, single motherhood or divorce). If their plan to have a ton of recreational sex results in a baby, then they want to kill that baby, so they won’t be burdened by the consequences of their own choices. Women don’t want to stay home with very young children. They don’t want to care for their husbands’ needs. In fact, most of them would prefer to have money extracted from working men through taxation, and then distributed back to to women through government programs and handouts. What they really mean is that they want to marry the government, and escape from the authority of husbands and fathers, and the obligation to respect them, too.

Now, speaking as a chaste Christian man, marriage is my goal and so I read a lot of research about how marriage succeeds or fails, as well as research on what children need in order to succeed. The evidence that I’ve written about before shows that marriages are more stable and better quality if both the man and the woman have no previous sexual experience. The evidence also shows that children need a mother for at least the first two years of life, and preferably the first five years of life. The evidence shows that fatherlessness is tantamount to child abuse. And the evidence shows that divorce scars children for life. And the evidence shows that men feel better about themselves when they are recognized and respected by their family as the protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader of the home.

Therefore, we should be encouraging men and women to be chaste prior to marriage. Not only is this good for marital stability and quality, but fewer unborn children will be murdered by women. We should encourage women to stay home at least two years with new children, and five would be better. We should be encouraging people to be more careful about choosing the right man for the roles of husband and father, and not telling them to choose a man based on superficialities like appearance, emotions and cultural approval. We should be making it harder for women to divorce men by removing the financial incentives to divorce and requiring a demonstration of fault.

That’s what we would do if we wanted a marriage that is good for God, good for society, good for men and good for children. But let me be clear: that is not what women want. They say they want “marriage”, but they don’t want what marriage actually is: husbands caring for wives, wives submitting to husbands, and protecting and nurturing children. Marriage, to a woman, means that government will make sure that no one can obligate her to do anything that doesn’t make her feel happy. Not husbands. Not children. No one.

I think that Christian men like me need to be very careful about knitting our souls to a single woman today. Lots of women label themselves as “Christian” and even attend church. But if they haven’t taken the time to get informed about men and marriage, you shouldn’t be fooled by them. They are opposed to God, men, morality, marriage and children. They are pro-abortion. They will kill to make recreational sex consequence free. They are pro-gay-marriage. They don’t believe that children have a right to a mother and a father to whom they belong, and who are obligated to care for them.

Single men: be careful about marrying single women today – the odds are that you are going to get hurt. You can see the danger they pose to you and your children by looking at what they vote for. You might as well go to the zoo and marry an alligator and hope for love for you and your children from that. Don’t be stupid. Look how they vote and think about what it tells you about their priorities and sense of obligation. Marriage made sense when women were self-controlled and cared about the needs of men and children and their obligations to men and children. Now they don’t. If you want a traditional marriage, and the happiness of being a real man to a woman, and the joy of seeing your children cared for by someone you love and trust, then think carefully before you get married. Because that old definition of marriage is dead. The word remains, but the meaning is lost.